How Hope Grew in Lesleigh’s Life

Lesleigh spent her childhood in a home where care was scarce and love was something she learned to live without. For years, survival meant enduring what others would call unthinkable; abuse, neglect and a life that taught her to expect nothing better. What felt “normal” was really a slow unraveling.

Adulthood brought two children she loved deeply but it also brought the weight of addiction. Lesleigh didn’t begin using drugs until later in life, yet once addiction took hold, it tightened its grip quickly. She knew the truth with painful clarity: if she continued down that path, she wouldn’t survive another year. She felt captive to her choices, questioning everything. Questioning her worth, her purpose and even whether God saw her at all.

But in her darkest moment, she finally surrendered. And in that surrender, she found freedom. Lesleigh describes it as chains breaking. It was an awakening that reminded her she was still worth saving. Drugs had numbed her pain but they had never healed it. The only thing that truly rescued her was God.

Early in her sobriety, she moved to Statesboro, searching for a fresh start. What she found was more than she expected. She found Esther’s Place.

From the moment she walked through the doors, she discovered something she had never known before: a community that truly cared. A support system that stood beside her. A family that welcomed her without hesitation. Esther’s Place became the light that pulled her out of the shadows she had lived her entire life in. Esther’s Place was a place where hope was given freely and where she learned that hope grows stronger when we grow together.

As she healed, something began to stir in her heart: a desire to give back. She didn’t have much but she had determination. So Lesleigh began collecting spare change. Every coin she found, every bit she could gather from others, she saved quietly for months. When Lesleigh finally brought it to Esther’s Place, Lori and Tanya were blown away, not by the money, which totaled $499.44, but by her heart. It wasn’t about the amount. It was about giving all she had so another woman could experience the same hope she had been given. The change Lesleigh collected and donated to Esther’s Place was more than coins. It was a symbol of the change hope brings.

Now, nine months clean and sober, she calls Esther’s Place the turning point she had prayed for. It has become her safe haven, her reminder that healing is possible and her proof that hope can take root in even the hardest soil. As she steps into this new year, a year of change, she carries a new purpose: to be for someone else what Esther’s Place has been for her.

Because when hope is given, it doesn’t stop with one life. It grows. It multiplies. It transforms. And together, we grow that hope: one woman, one story, one new beginning at a time.